"How can I tell, Natalushka?"
The girl laughed—rather a forced laugh, perhaps; she could not altogether shake off the consciousness of the peril that surrounded her lover.
"Why, mother, you are a pretty courier! You are about to cross the Channel, and you do not know which way the wind is, or whether the sea is rough, or anything. Now I will tell you; it is I who am the courier. The wind is north
east; the sea was quite smooth yesterday evening; I think we shall have a comfortable passage. And do you know why I have brought you away by this train? Don't you know that I shall get you down to Dover in time to give you something nice for dinner; then, if the sea is quite smooth, we go on board before the people come; then we cross over to Calais and go to a hotel there; then you get a good, long, sound sleep, you little mother, and the next day—that is to-morrow—about noon, I think, we go easily on to Paris. What do you think of that, now?"
"Whatever you do will be right, Natalushka; you know I have never before had a daughter to look after me."
Natalie's programme was fulfilled to the letter, and with good fortune. They dined in the hotel, had some tea, and then went down through the dark clear night to the packet. The sea was like a mill-pond; there was just sufficient motion of the water to make the reflections of the stars quiver in the dark. The two women sat together on deck; and as the steamer gradually took them away from the lights of the English coast, Natalie sung to her mother, in a low voice, some verses of an old Magyar song, which were scarcely audible amidst the rush of water and the throbbing of the paddles.
Next day the long and tedious railway journey began; and here again Natalie acted as the most indefatigable and accomplished of couriers.
"How do you manage it, Natalushka?" said the mother, as she got into the coupe, to this tall and handsome young lady who was standing outside, and on whom everybody seemed to wait. "You get everything you want, and without trouble."
"It is only practice, with a little patience," she said, simply, as she opened her flask of white-rose scent and handed it up to her mother.
Necessarily, it was rail all the way for these two travellers. Not for them the joyous assembling on the Mediterranean shore, where Nice lies basking in the sun like a pink surf thrown up by the waves. Not for them the packing of the great carriage, and the swinging away of the four horses with their jingling bells, and the slow climbing of the Cornice, the road twisting up the face of the gray mountains, through perpetual lemon-groves, with far below the ribbed blue sea. Not for them the leisurely trotting all day long through the luxuriant beauty of the Riviera—the sun hot on the ruddy cliffs of granite, and on the terraces of figs and vines and spreading